


All This Time, I Thought I Was Wrong

by stardustedknuckles



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Memory Loss, Not Canon Compliant, Pre-Relationship, Prompt Fill, brief angst, old draft polished up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:46:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28141848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustedknuckles/pseuds/stardustedknuckles
Summary: They won a hard battle, but not before a toll was exacted from them all. One of their own, taken from memory and left behind until the hole in their minds where she had been was filled again.Homebrew Advent Prompt day 17: Gathering
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha
Comments: 8
Kudos: 154





	All This Time, I Thought I Was Wrong

**Author's Note:**

> I was working on a happy fluffy date but it wasn't going anywhere...so have some angst. Not set at any particular point or place, just a word sketch I started back in September.

"There." Caduceus said confidently, and Yasha nearly fell over herself in her scramble to claw through the brush until she could see him - and more importantly, where he was pointing and walking towards.

It took her a moment; the sun was almost down and the shadows and thick leaves and trees all looked the same in the weird time between daylight and dark, when her night vision was easily tricked and the world shifted from color to monochrome indiscriminately. The end result was that she very nearly tripped over what she was looking for before she saw her and skidded to a stop a foot away.

"Oh, Beau," she whispered. She was frozen, turned to stone with one hand clenched desperately around her middle and one reaching out with all of her might. Yasha had a horrible, dim impression, more instinct than memory, of her own fingers trying and failing to grasp her.

She heard Jester's small gasp beside her and turned to see her freckled, open face drawn tight with worry and sadness.

Yasha's mind had been restored, but the memories of the fight were indistinct and muddied, like impressions rather than images. She remembered being afraid and angry, had the distinct impression there should be more bodies strewn about, but it destroyed her to see the look of terror on Beau's stone face and not be able to recall what had caused it.

"We set up here, then," Fjord spoke up from behind them, his voice steady and authoritative. "She's not going anywhere, and we'll have her back in the morning. Tonight, we keep watch." He nodded to Yasha and Jester, his face softening and reminding Yasha just how much Beau meant to everyone in the group, not just to her. All of them were thinking along the same lines as she was, but it felt so much heavier to her. She should have known, somehow.

As though she's spoken aloud, Jester suddenly nudged her shoulder up against Yasha, pulling her from her thoughts. "You saved her," she said quietly.

Yasha's trembling fingers brushed over the unyielding, cold stone of Beau's. "It doesn't feel that way."

"She is right," Caleb said. It seemed hard for him to drag his eyes from Beau, but he did and searched Yasha's face. "You were the only one of us who held enough to know there was somebody to save." There was guilt in his voice that didn't belong, and Yasha's jaw clenched with the effort to keep the tears away. It wasn't yet time to exhale or feel relief, not when Beau was still frozen like this, but something inside of her had been set right at knowing they had found her, that she would be theirs again, that she would soon have Beau warm and alive in her arms again and never let go.

"You died to find her," Jester reminded her softly. "You never gave up. And now we're here and she's here, and it's going to be okay."

Yasha nodded, feeling hollow.

"Time won't have really passed for her," Caduceus piped up in his soothing voice. "She's going to come back fine." Yasha thought guiltily of his secondhand experience with that very thing and tried for a smile of thanks.

"Yeah, and we killed the fucker and his little pet!" Veth shrieked from the treeline, waving a fruit she'd gathered before adding it to the small pile in her arms.

Yasha turned back to Beau and her face grew solemn again. "Time passed for me, though," she said. Two entire months there had been an itch in Yasha's mind.

Dreams where she was chasing someone, just barely missing the chance to see them, calling for them to wait, please, come back.

Two months of waking up confused at the absence of body heat pressed up against her.

More fights than she could count wherein she blindly trusted someone to have her back who wasn't there - until finally, it had been her undoing.

Looking at Beau now, it seemed incredible to her - everything Yasha had been through in two months was hard enough, but waking up to her memories restored had brought with it more than the relief and subsequent desperation. She felt violated, to have had Beau taken from her this way, even temporarily. Having her here now did little to change that.

She blinked as Jester threw her arms around her waist, face pressed into Yasha's chest. She wrapped her arms around her friend and found that it was easier to focus on soothing her than to keep dwelling on what happened and what could have, so she did.

"I'm sorry I didn't have the right spell so we could bring her back tonight," Jester whispered.

"You couldn't have known," Yasha said gently. She searched for the next words, forced herself to say them. "None of us could have."

Caleb spoke up quietly. "I am very glad that we didn't have to use the spells you did have prepared."

Jester shuddered a little. "Me too."

The rest of the nein were in the tower, but she'd been able to do little more than get some food and water in her before slipping away and back out to sit in front of the statue of Beau. It was nice that the weather was mild, but it wouldn't have mattered if it were snowing. She wasn't going anywhere.

Yasha's darkvision washed everything in a monochrome, and in this way Beau looked less like a lost carving and more like Yasha was looking at a moment frozen in time. But for the foliage around her shifting ever so gently in the cool night breeze, she imagined it would feel like she herself were also stone.

For a moment, the ground and the leaves around Yasha flashed orange and crimson and gold. She turned to see the door to the mansion open, the familiar silhouette of Caduceus stepping through before closing it gently and returning the world to gray.

He came to stand beside Yasha, and for a moment they simply watched Beau together. Caduceus placed his warm hand on Yasha's shoulder and when she looked up, he extended his other hand to pass her a gently steaming mug of something that smelled hot and fruity and spiced. "I thought you could use something calming."

Yasha had a hard time comprehending calm at the moment, but she gave a weak smile in thanks and received the mug. It smelled even stronger up close, and even in spite of the ache inside of Yasha she had to admit that something about it did seem comforting and cheerful, like amber glowing in the dark.

She took a sip and made an involuntary sound. It wasn't even that it was good, though it was - it tasted like sunshine, like hunting foxes in late summer and falling asleep at a bonfire after dancing. "Is this magic?"

Caduceus smiled and shook his head. "Just something of my own making. I've found it tends to lose its potency if I drink it too often, so I keep it pretty sparing. Besides." He looked around. "Not many places you can find the right fruit to make it fresh." The implication of a silver lining hung in the air, but he didn't say it out loud and that counted for something.

"Thank you," Yasha murmured. She looked up again at Beau. "I wish I could share it with her."

"In time," he assured her. "But the hard part's over." Yasha nodded absently and took another sip.

Caduceus stood with her for another minute, and then he patted her shoulder softly and said, "I'm going to get some rest for tomorrow. I hope you find some too."

And even though she'd been almost certain she might never sleep again, the moon rose that night on the scene of a stone Beau standing guard over a sleeping Yasha, who guarded her in turn at her feet.

"I've got her," Caduceus said quietly. Morning had only just broken, and they all stood in the early dawn chill in preparation to get their friend back.

Caduceus withdrew a handful of glittering dust and glanced at Jester. "There's no telling what state she'll be in when it wears off, but it doesn't look great. You're ready with healing?"

Jester nodded without looking away from Beau. "Please hurry."

He smiled kindly from her to Yasha, who was wearing the same expression dialed down to her usual. "It's alright," he said. "She's safe now with us." He turned to the statue of Beau and held up his hand. "Long time no see," he said softly. "Why don't you come on back here with us and catch up?" He blew the dust from one hand and reached out to touch Beau's forehead with the other.

For a moment there seemed to be no change, and then the uniform gray slowly began to develop shadows and shades. As soon as Yasha detected it, it seemed to speed up and a moment later Beau collapsed in full color with a deep and wrenching breath. Yasha and Jester were already waiting for her, and Yasha wasted no time pouring her meager healing through the hand on Beau's ribs where her arm was wrapped around in support. Jester's hands glowed green, and then she pulled Beau's arm from where it covered her side and pressed them to the long gash that was bleeding freely with the pressure removed.

Beau trembled in Yasha's arms, skin slicked with sweat and eyes unfocused as she tried to breathe through the receding pain and make sense of her surroundings.

Caduceus knelt before her and smiled in his encouraging way. "Welcome back," he said, and gripped her shoulder with another soft glow. "Don't try to remember it all at once."

Beau's fingers dug into the ground and she looked around. "Wh…leaves?" The forest surrounding them had been green during the fight, Yasha remembered. To Beau, it would seem like everything had gone from green to orange in the span of a blink.

She shushed Beau gently and drew her close. This seemed to snap her back to herself; she stiffened and looked at Yasha in confusion. A frown appeared. "You're dressed differently." She twisted in Yasha's arms - not away, just to get a better look. "All of you look different. Why is it colder? Where the guy-?"

"Let's get you home," Caduceus said in his gentle rumble. "A lot's happened, but you're back with us now and that's what's important."

Beau pressed a hand to her forehead with a groan, trying for measured breaths. Yasha's chest tightened with dread; Beau wasn't going to let this go.

"I was…you were just here." She looked to Caleb, comprehension dawning. "I was stone."

Nobody replied.

Beau stared him down now, voice strengthening. "How long." Caleb looked uncertainly at Yasha and the others. "Don't look at them." He turned back to her reluctantly. "Don't bullshit me, Caleb. How long? A year? More?"

"Two months," he said quietly. "And four days."

Beau's spine straightened, and Yasha felt a selfish thrill when she still didn't move away. "Okay," she said. "Two months. I can…wow." She scrubbed a hand over her face and froze. "Wait. Months?" Confusion was turning to hurt, and Yasha felt panic rising in her as she could see Beau starting to fill in holes with bad information and past experience.

"It's not what you think," Yasha said urgently. "We came for you as soon as we could."

Suspicion on Beau's face now, and out of the corner of her eye Yasha saw the moment Jester broke. "We couldn't remember you!" she blurted desperately.

A final flash of resigned pain across Beau's face before it turned neutral again - there and gone in an instant but burned into Yasha's mind.

"Our memories were taken," Yasha explained. It hurt to say, but nowhere near as much as it hurt to watch Beau struggle.

She turned to Yasha, blue eyes wide. "What?"

Fjord stepped up, hand raised in a placating gesture. "The guys we were fighting, there was a powerful one. He...did something to our minds and made us forget you. We killed him, but it didn't break what was done."

He nodded towards Yasha, and her heart sank. She didn't want him to say it, but knew it would come out eventually.

"Yasha was first to remember," he said. "There was a fight, and she...went down."

Beau turned from Fjord to stare at Yasha from head to toe, her hand reaching out to grasp Yasha's forearm like she needed to be sure she was really there suddenly. Yasha knew the feeling.

"It broke the enchantment," she told Beau. "I wasn't gone long."

Beau still looked stricken. "You…?"

She trailed off, and Yasha picked up before Beau could finish the thought. "It happened because part of me did remember. Some instinct told me someone was looking out for me in battle, even with everything." She smiled reassuringly. "I'm okay."

Veth piped up. "Yeah! She was dead for like ten seconds and then she came back talking about this Beau person like we were supposed to know her. It was awful!" Everyone looked at her. "What? She almost gutted me for it!" She gestured emphatically to Beau. "And I mean obviously it's not annoying _now_."

As it usually did, Veth's complete irreverence for a situation made a side of Beau's mouth quirk. She looked like maybe another kind of stone might be dissolving. Yasha was grateful. She had no idea how to navigate this.

"We had to spend all of our spells getting everyone's memory back," Jester continued. "And then I scried on you and we came right away to wake you up as soon as we could."

Yasha had been watching Jester, and now she turned back to Beau anxiously. She was still looking only at Yasha, and aside from the flicker of a smile it was unclear if she'd even heard the rest. "Are you alright?" she said finally.

Yasha tried for a smile of her own and tried not to think of how it might have come through. "I'm fine." She touched Beau's face gently. "I've got you back."

Beau glanced uncertainly at her hand but didn't pull away. "I meant…your memories, someone fucked with them again."

Yasha nodded. "And they died horribly." She hesitated. "Beau, let's go back to the tower. You need to rest, and we can talk."

Caleb was already pulling the door open again, and Beau nodded uncertainly. "Yeah." She pressed a hand to her stomach and looked over. "It feels like I haven't eaten in two months."

Yasha chuckled, surprising them both and pulling more of a real smile from Beau. Yasha wanted to pick her up and carry her, for no other reason than to feel her warmth and know the nightmare was over. Instead, she held out a hand with a confidence that would have been entirely out of reach two months ago. Beau regarded it quietly, and then she took it in hers and let Yasha lead them home.


End file.
